Weaving Work-Truth into Church Life (Part Seven)
This series of blogs explores how your local church can include God’s truth about daily work in the Sunday agenda. Part Seven points to the need to include those with workplace experience on the teaching team. Links to previous articles in this series: (Part One) (Part Two) (Part Three) (Part Four) (Part Five) (Part Six)
Who do you see as the three greatest teachers in the New Testament? Would Jesus be your first choice? How about Paul—would he come in second? And would Peter make your list? In terms of life-shaping background, what do these three preacher-teachers all have in common? Each spent years toiling in ordinary workplaces. Some think Jesus probably put in a couple of decades as a builder or craftsman. Paul earned his way by making tents. Peter grew up working in the family fishing business.
Each of these great teachers—Jesus, Paul, Peter—had been molded by years in so-called “secular” work. Is such on-the-job experience spiritually significant? “I’m prepared to contend,” wrote Eugene Peterson, “that the primary location for spiritual formation is the workplace.” Notice that Peterson did not name the work world as a primary location but as the primary location for spiritual formation. If true, should we take workplace experience into account as we select church leaders today?
The Pastor Who Became a Carpenter
One pastor decided to do something about his lack of experience in the work world. Paul Stevens, after serving 25 years in the pastoral role, took a job as a carpenter. Why? He explains why in his book, Liberating the Laity: “What gripped my conscience,” he says, “were the areas that I had not yet applied to myself. One such area was that I had never supported myself in ministry by the work of my own hands or mind. . . . This plunge into the lay world was for me the only way I could gain the experiential base for a larger equipping ministry.”
After his years in the construction business, Stevens—like Jesus, Paul, and Peter—had “won his spurs” in non-church work. All of which raises a question in my mind: Should we twenty-first century Christ-followers intentionally include among our teaching leaders those whose spiritual formation includes substantial workplace experience?
Insight from Church History
Church history seems to support such a practice. Non-ecclesiastical work occupied many early church leaders. In Liberating the Laity, Stevens gives several examples of leaders engaging in so-called “secular” work. In a fourth century letter, Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, wrote: “Although our clergy do seem very numerous, . . . the majority of them [work at] sedentary crafts whereby they get their daily bread.” And a decree from the Fourth Council of Carthage says, “Let a cleric however learned in the word of God get his livelihood by a craft.”
One New Testament Benchmark for Church Leadership
These two and many other early-church examples line up with New Testament teaching. When he counseled Timothy on selecting a church overseer, Paul said the candidate was to have—in addition to the ability to teach— “a good reputation with outsiders” (I Tim. 3:1-7). Two observations here.
First, the teaching. Paul seems to take it for granted that overseers will form strong relationships with people outside the church—strong enough that non-Christians say good things about them. I once took part in a meeting of church leaders in which the speaker challenged us to pray in pairs for non-Christian acquaintances. The pastor-friend seated next to me said, “I don’t know any unbelievers.” Spending all his time in and attention on the gathered church, he had no standing with outsiders. But what better way to build a solid reputation with unbelievers than to have regular and frequent contact with them on the job? The workplace generously supplies opportunities to nurture relationships with “outsiders.” Jesus, Paul, and Peter certainly had built reputations with their coworkers and customers.
Second, the practices. Paul, Peter, and Luke (in Acts) all reflect a pattern of plural church leadership. Having multiple overseers/elders/shepherds opens the door not only to a diversity of giftedness but also to a wealth of occupational experiences. A shepherding team that includes several from the work world can offer teaching with fresh-from-the-front-lines illustrations of the challenges and opportunities other believers face in that arena.
The Teaching-Preaching Team in Westview Bible Church
For years, Westview Bible Church in Pierrefonds, Quebec, has heard from a teaching team with firsthand workplace knowledge. Nita Kotiuga, one of the pastors says, “It is crucial that the people who are preaching have common experience with the congregation. So our preaching-teaching team has included a teacher, a professor, a dentist, an engineer, retirees, and a stay-at-home mom.”
That workplace connection, Kotiuga says, is vital. “Every Sunday there are people who come up to the preacher and say, ‘I want to share something that happened to me this week at work.’ But if you’re a pastor with no track record in the workplace, what experience do you have working for a dysfunctional boss? Sure, you report to the Elders’ Board, and they function as your boss. But at Westview, this board is made up of really nice people who want to think the best of their employees. When our preacher-teachers pray with people who’ve walked through similar difficulties it means so much more.”
Westview Bible plans to hire a lead pastor who will speak about 60 percent of the time. This should bring in the indisputable benefits of excellent theological training. But those from the various occupations will still be bringing the other 40 percent of the messages. So the preaching-teaching team will continue to include those with the workplace perspective.
The Pastoral Task: Equipping
Looking back on his years as a carpenter, Paul Stevens writes, “Unless we equip the laity to live all of life for God, Christianity will degenerate into mere religion. I had to learn that true spirituality is hammering nails for God and praying before a precise saw cut.” He adds, “Equipping is in the end a pastoral task. . . . Equipping starts with the equipper getting equipped. . . . The weakest link in the gathered services of the church surely is in the preparation for re-entry into the world.”
In what way is that link weakened if all the sermons come only from those whose salary comes from the church? To ask the question in another way, what does a congregation miss if no teaching leader works in a day job?
Why Did Paul Work at Making Tents?
Paul himself provides the answer: “For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow” (II Thess. 3:7-9).
Had Paul not worked making tents, the Thessalonian believers would have missed his model, his pattern, for them to follow. Even before the days of kindergarten with its show and tell, Paul knew not only how to tell the gospel but also how to show how it works in life outside the gathered church.
A teaching team that includes some who earn their living in so-called “secular” jobs is a team that can lead not only by word but also by example.
